* Bob Uecker voice. *
In case you haven’t noticed, and judging by the attendance at Rose Bowl Stadium, Angelenos haven’t, UCLA football is undefeated.
A basic rule of Hollywood remains: Stars sell tickets, not teams.
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Bob Chesney might look like he’s straight out of a movie studio’s casting department, but he’s coaching a team full of no-names.
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UCLA is winning with a quarterback who transferred in from the FCS and began the season as the backup, plus a running back off the James Madison portal pipeline, and a defense that answers every bell.
The Bruins are overachieving, they’re taking advantage of a weak schedule, and their odds of making the playoff improve with each passing Saturday.
L.A yawns.
Despite launching a complimentary ticket promotion, a crowd of 24,611 turned up last weekend to watch UCLA beat Nevada, 27-0. In the South, they might call such a crowd the “west sideline attendance.”
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Here’s the key question: Does Chesney care that L.A. doesn’t care about his team?
If Chesney wants to coach where an undefeated team would be the big ticket in town, he’ll need to eventually leave the city where they literally can’t give away enough tickets to fill the stadium.
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Down in Florida, governor-elect Byron Donalds endorsed Chesney for Florida State’s coaching vacancy.
“Bob Chesney did great at James Madison. He’s doing great at UCLA,” a smiling Donalds said at a campaign stop this week. Donalds’ son played for Chesney at Holy Cross.
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FSU’s athletics department is in such a jumbled state that the Seminoles likely lack the clout to uproot Chesney from the Big Ten, but it’s early November, and firing-and-hiring season is only just starting to heat up. More jobs will open.
As the coaching carousel gains steam, UCLA is working on a raise and an extension for Chesney, USA TODAY Sports colleague John Brice reported this week.
Chesney’s breakout season in Year 1 makes a salary boost an expected development, but unless an extension includes non-compete language or cost-prohibitive exit fees, then it’s just a raise, and not a firm tether, and I’m still wondering whether it bothers Chesney to march toward the playoff in relative obscurity.
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Sports are entertainment, and entertainers performing at the top of their game typically don’t relish playing to the crickets.
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You could say UCLA playing a cupcake opponent tanked last weekend’s attendance, and I could say Nebraska would sell out its stadium if a team from the California Penal League came to Lincoln.
The top attendance figure for any of UCLA’s five home games this season was a rousing 36,045 on hand for a 17-7 win against Wisconsin, within a stadium that seats more than 91,000 when the tarps are off.
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Lane Kiffin once put it like this: Los Angeles is not a football place
Lane Kiffin, who once left a primo SEC job to be Southern Cal’s coach, described to me several years ago what it’s like to return to Los Angeles as the former USC coach.
“Ninety-five percent of people do not recognize you,” Kiffin told me, “and the 5% that do, 95% of them don’t say anything to you. If they do, it’s, ‘Good luck, Coach.’ And, usually, if they say something, they’re not from there. They’re from the South somewhere, and they’re visiting.”
Kiffin also said, “L.A. gets mad when you say this,” but it’s not a football place.
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“Like I used to say,” Kiffin said, “there’s a lot more famous people” in L.A. than the football coach.
If the UCLA football coach wants to spot a celebrity, he doesn’t look in the mirror. He heads to Craig’s in West Hollywood or the Polo Lounge on Sunset Boulevard and scans the clientele.
Look, we can tick through all the explanations for UCLA’s attendance woes.
UCLA’s conference realignment to the Big Ten boosted media rights revenue, but it did no box-office favors. UCLA traded Pac-12 rivalries with teams like Cal and Stanford for conference home games against Purdue and Illinois.
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Bruins fans might still be battle scarred from the short-lived DeShaun Foster era, although you could argue Chip Kelly’s heel turn and the subsequent Foster disaster ought to make them more appreciative of this season.
When new coaches spurred uprisings at success-starved Indiana and Kentucky, those fan bases went all-in on football, but then again, Bloomington and Lexington are college towns, as compared to L.A., a bustling city where colleges exist.
And, of course, there’s the obvious caveat with UCLA: It plays its home games at a leased stadium located 26 miles from campus, and a trek to the Rose Bowl involves battling traffic.
Each of these arguments holds some merit, but in certain parts of the country, fans would walk 26 miles to the stadium to watch an undefeated team, especially if the university distributed complimentary tickets like they’re Tootsie Rolls on Halloween.
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As Kiffin said, L.A. just is not a football place.
Does Chesney care about that?
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Listen to his podcast, “College Football Unfiltered.”Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: UCLA can’t give away tickets. Why should Bob Chesney stick around?
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